Thanks to funding from the digiS Research Center, the Artists-in-Berlin Program is cataloging and digitizing archive material in 2024 with an eye toward Berlin’s contemporary and cultural history from previously underrepresented perspectives. The focus is on collaborative communication in conjunction with the Writing Berlin research project at the Freie Universität Berlin, the Deutsche Kinemathek, and with the research project on Jewish film history at the Babelsberg Film University.
Among the materials being digitized and examined, for instance, are unpublished interviews conducted by Shelly Silver with Berliners in 1992, as well as the complex and largely unknown filmic work of Yugoslavian artist Irena Vrkljan, who came to Berlin in 1966 as one of the first female fellowship recipients. A variety of voices, sounds, images, and histories tell of experiences of exile, migration, and queer and feminist communities. The existing educational project Mapping the Archive forms a starting point for creating further access to digitized material with contemporary and cultural-historical relevance for Berlin.
The digitization of the archive is funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion and the Research and Competence Centre for Digitization Berlin (digiS).